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| <title>NetBeans 5.5 in Traditional Chinese: A Noteworthy Follow-up</title> |
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| <h1>NetBeans 5.5 in Traditional Chinese: A Noteworthy Follow-up<br> |
| </h1> |
| <br> |
| Chin-Lung “James” Yu (余金龍) is no stranger to translation projects. At |
| the age of 15, he won a translation competition sponsored by <i>Ladder |
| English</i>, a famous English language learning magazine in Taiwan. The |
| task? To translate a select passage from English to Chinese. For his |
| first-place win, he received a book: “Stuart Little” by E.B. White.<br> |
| <br> |
| <img alt="Chin-Lung "James" Yu" |
| src="../../images_www/articles/zh-tw55/james-yu.jpg" |
| style="width: 172px; height: 215px;" align="left" hspace="5" vspace="5">Skip |
| ahead 20 years after that win and Yu finds himself back in the |
| spotlight for a translation effort of a different magnitude, that of |
| single-handedly localizing the NetBeans 5.5 IDE into Traditional |
| Chinese (zh_TW), a version that was successfully released February 26. |
| But instead of a hard-cover reward, he has the satisfaction of knowing |
| that Taiwanese developers can begin to work with the |
| NetBeans IDE in their own language.<br> |
| <br> |
| The localization of the NetBeans IDE into Traditional Chinese is the |
| latest successful community-driven contribution from the <a |
| href="http://nblocalization.netbeans.org//">NetBeans Translation |
| Project</a>, which offers guidance and support for users interested in |
| creating local language versions of the NetBeans IDE and Platform, and |
| NetBeans.org web pages. In December 2006, the <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/brazil55-release.html">Brazilian |
| Portuguese</a> |
| version of NetBeans 5.5 was released by a team of Brazilian developers |
| working under the auspices of the Translation Project. Coincidentally, |
| coming across the announcement of the Brazilian Portuguese release of |
| NetBeans 5.5 spurred Yu, a PhD candidate in molecular and medical |
| pharmacology, to consider translating the IDE into Traditional Chinese.<br> |
| <br> |
| “I heard that the new NetBeans 5.5 had been much improved in features |
| and performance than earlier versions that I had tried before, so I |
| started to try it out and saw how I could switch from Eclipse,” said Yu |
| who uses Java to develop tools that process and analyze molecular |
| images for his research. <br> |
| <br> |
| “Then one day in December, when I started up the IDE to practice I saw |
| an announcement in the welcome screen that NetBeans 5.5 had been |
| translated into Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Brazilian Portuguese. |
| This announcement immediately made me think about translating 5.5 into |
| Traditional Chinese, so I signed up with the translation team and |
| volunteered to take on the Traditional Chinese localization project.”<br> |
| <br> |
| With little experience translating software products or participating |
| in an open-source community effort, and still a novice with the |
| NetBeans IDE, Yu began translating with the guidance of members of the |
| Translation Project. In three short weeks, he had completely translated |
| the IDE.<br> |
| <br> |
| <div style="text-align: center;"> |
| <a href="../../images_www/articles/zh-tw55/zh-tw55-screenshot.png"><img |
| alt="Screenshot of NetBeans IDE in Traditional Chinese" |
| src="../../images_www/articles/zh-tw55/zh-tw55-screenshot.png" |
| style="width: 622px; height: 454px;" hspace="5" vspace="5"></a><br> |
| <span style="font-style: italic;">(Click on image for larger view)</span><br> |
| </div> |
| <br> |
| Three additional contributors: Koji Lin (林康司), Mike Lin (林上傑) and David |
| Lin (林子鐸)—(no relation between the three)—responded to a recruitment |
| thread on <a href="http://www.javaworld.com.tw/jute/">JavaWorld@TW</a>, |
| a popular developer site in Taiwan, and signed |
| up to review, update and test Yu’s work. In joining the project, the |
| three developers wrote that they recognized a need for turning the |
| NetBeans 5.5 IDE into a Chinese-based IDE for Taiwanese developers who |
| would otherwise ignore the IDE in its English form. <br> |
| <br> |
| Mike Lin, a training consultant with Sun Taiwan and who teaches |
| developers |
| in Traditional Chinese about Java technology and recently about |
| NetBeans 5.5, thought it was logical that his students have access to a |
| localized version of the IDE. David Lin, a graduate student in computer |
| science and a NetBean user for four years, enjoyed working with the new |
| features of 5.5 and wanted to make the IDE popular among other |
| Taiwanese developers. Likewise, Koji Lin, who uses NetBeans in his job |
| as a Java web developer, was attracted to Matisse and the IDE’s |
| convenient web application development environment, and thought others |
| like him ought to know about NetBeans.<br> |
| <br> |
| Although the NetBeans 5.5 IDE is available in Simplified Chinese, a |
| Traditional Chinese version was needed to accommodate variations in the |
| Chinese language. Derived from Traditional Chinese, characters in |
| Simplified Chinese contain fewer strokes and thus are easier to |
| learn. The form, which was created over 50 years ago to promote |
| literacy, is used primarily in Mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, |
| while Traditional Chinese is dominant in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and |
| the majority of Chinese communities abroad. According to Yu, having the |
| IDE already translated into Simplified Chinese was an advantage. |
| Because of the shared root of the two forms he translated from |
| Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese, a quicker |
| process than from English. Translating certain Java terminologies that |
| some developers |
| prefer to use in English was an occasional challenge.<br> |
| <br> |
| While Taiwanese developers can now experience the bliss of working in |
| the NetBeans 5.5 IDE in Traditional Chinese, German-speaking developers |
| won't be far behind, thanks to another translation project |
| that is nearing completion. Ruth Kusterer, a NetBeans |
| technical writer, Christoph Strobel, Holger Stenzhorn and Peter Heusch, |
| are localizing <a |
| href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/GermanTranslators">NetBeans |
| 5.5 into German</a>.<br> |
| <br> |
| The Brazilian developers may have seemed a tough act to follow, |
| but their work has inspired users like James Yu and other language |
| communities to initiate |
| and complete noteworthy localizations of their own.<br> |
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